For most of the last forty odd years, we have been trying to live a more resilient, self-sufficient and sustainable life and while I admit to not being the sharpest tool in the shed, that length of experience is bound to have an impact on even the dimmest. This article is part of an irregular series of articles where I try to summarise some of the hard-won wisdom those years have bought!
Sharing is Caring
We produce our own food in our efforts to live more sustainably and there are lots of good reasons why it is a good idea. Over the years I have designed my system to reduce excesses, but we still get them occasionally and when we do we share our produce with family, friends, neighbours and even within our permaculture group. Surely when you see the phrase ‘sharing is caring’ sharing produce is probably the first thing you think of, but there is an even more important type of sharing we do – sharing information.
A bit over 10 years ago we had been living here for 30 years and growing our own food, minimising our water and energy use, reducing our waste etc, but our impact on the people in our street was negligible. It’s only in the last 5 years that one neighbour has started to do a bit more of growing their own. Then I found out about Sustainable House Day (or Solar House Day, as it was at that time) and we started opening every year to share what we were doing and what we had learned with others. A couple of years after that I joined a permaculture group and we started opening for Permaculture day.
This was good, we were talking to like-minded people when we opened and within the permaculture group, but I wanted to do still more. As luck would have it, at that time my elder daughter was working as a web designer so about 8 years ago she developed the Under The Choko Tree website for us. That enabled us to reach out to people all over the world and encourage them with our experience that you don’t need to move to te country to live a more sustainable lifestyle, that making the cities more sustainable was not only possible, but fun!
Then about 5 or 6 years ago I was given the opportunity to talk to people directly in the Sydney area and run workshops, funded by a number of local councils on a variety of sustainable living subjects. I even got to co-teach a permaculture course with a friend. Most of the work I do to get the word out is voluntary, but so important that we have to keep on doing it, to help people understand what it possible.
So yes, sharing food is important and a basic thing that we humans do, and we need to keep doing it, but in the longer term, sharing information is more important.
…. And then there is sharing our skills, and that is what a permablitz is for!
